Eastern Europe · data through 2024
Romania has one of the largest emigrant populations in the European Union relative to its size, and is now beginning to receive workers from outside Europe.
Twenty five year view
These lines show migrant stock, meaning people living outside their birth country at each point in time. They do not show annual arrivals.
Why people move
After 2007 accession, large numbers moved to Italy, Spain, Germany, and the United Kingdom, often into construction, agriculture, and care. Depopulation of rural counties and shortages in health care are the domestic consequences.
Connections
Common destinations
Italy, Spain, Germany, United Kingdom, France
Common origins
Moldova, Ukraine, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Türkiye
Adapting and finding support
Children left with grandparents while parents work abroad are a recognised national concern. Returning families face housing costs concentrated in a few cities.
Consular networks and diaspora associations in Italy and Spain are the most practical help.
Use the support guideResearch that explains this pattern
Anthropology
Many families are not here or there but genuinely both, with money, decisions, care, and authority moving constantly across the border.
Integration and continued attachment to home rise together rather than trading off.
Nina Glick Schiller, Linda Basch, and Cristina Blanc Szanton
Psychology
Grief without a body or an ending, a parent alive but unreachable, a home that still exists but cannot be returned to, resists ordinary mourning.
Families hold the loss open for years, and closure focused support can do harm rather than help.
Pauline Boss, ambiguous loss theory
Psychology
Children of immigrants do not follow one path. Outcomes depend on the parents' resources, the strength of the community, and the reception they meet.
The same family can produce very different outcomes across cities and school systems.
Alejandro Portes and Rubén Rumbaut, segmented assimilation
Support inside and beyond Romania
Programmes, grants, and consular information for Romanians living abroad.
Romanians outside the country
OpenAssistance, voluntary return, reintegration, and counter trafficking support through the local office.
Anyone moving, arriving, or returning
OpenFamily tracing, first aid, food, shelter, and restoring family links.
People in transit and newly arrived families
OpenThese are public organisations. The project is not affiliated with them and cannot guarantee outcomes. Nothing here is legal advice or an emergency service.
Figures are rounded published estimates. Causes and adaptation differ within every country and should not be read as a verdict about any person.